


the sun, shining

by dustbottle



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Developing Friendships, Don't copy to another site, First Kiss, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Happy Ending, Healing, M/M, POV Jean, Post-Canon, Trust, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25085728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustbottle/pseuds/dustbottle
Summary: The world as Jean knows it ends on a Tuesday. This is what comes after.*And the fragrance, and the honey, and of coursethe sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, overall of us.Mary Oliver, fromNew and Selected Poems, Vol. Two
Relationships: Jeremy Knox/Jean Moreau, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 94





	the sun, shining

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: non-explicit references to past injuries, past abuse and the mental issues that were the result of that abuse.

The world as Jean knows it ends on a Tuesday.

Jean is twenty when he is dragged from the Nest, more dead than alive, broken and bruised and aching from his misaligned bones down to his bleeding heart. He doesn’t have the energy to fight for anything anymore, least of all himself, but he clings to the light by the tips of his broken fingernails and the crumbling edge of his resolve, and tries his hardest not to let go.

He leaves behind a war. He takes the nightmares. He takes the shadows. He takes the fear.

His feelings for Renee feel like latching onto a spot of light from the deepest dark. He doesn’t expect it to lead anywhere; someone like her, all warmth and kindness with steel underneath, would never want someone as damaged as him. Besides, he sees how Renee looks at that brazen-hearted Fox dealer like she holds the sun in her hands, like she spins gold with her poison-edged tongue, and in the yearning core of him, he understands.

Jean is twenty when he leaves the nurse’s spare bedroom and moves across the country to join his new team; he’s welcomed in their midst with firm handshakes and Californian smiles. He still aches, still feels like he’s _tearing apart_ , actually, but the pain is inconsequential; he can defend the goal, so he will play.

Jean is twenty when he wakes up for the first time with the sun lavishly warm on his face. He is alone in his room for the first time in years, and even through the panic and the jarring misplacement, it feels like a beginning. It feels like fear, but a different kind of fear, vibrant and lush. Someone less cynical than him might say it feels like hope.

Jean is twenty when he gets benched for the first games of the new season, and for a single dizzying second, the foundation of his world falls away. He doesn’t understand what he did wrong. _He doesn’t understand what he did wrong._ Then Knox tells him to take it easy for a while, give his body time to heal, eyes earnest and smooth voice pitched low; Jean almost scoffs at his skewed priorities, but he makes himself nod and look away. In his experience, nothing good has ever come of putting up a fight.

Jean is twenty when he makes a mistake on the court and doesn’t get punished for it. He is bracing for it, the inside of his skull already painted with panic and blood, but the expected blow never comes. Jeremy just resumes play, changing the grip on his racket and smiling his sun-bright smile, and Laila nods at Jean from her position in the goal, and life goes on.

_Life goes on._

From the beginning, the Trojans meet him with easy jokes and easier smiles; it’s bewildering, and Jean doesn’t trust it, but he thinks maybe he can learn.

Jean is twenty-one when Jeremy asks him to teach him some Raven drills, and Jean surprises himself by saying yes. It isn’t easy, but it isn’t as hard as he might have expected it to be, either. Jeremy is focused on the drills, turned inward as he gradually finds his feet; Jean watches him stumble more than once, watches him grit his teeth and persevere, watches him, finally, succeed. Jeremy is far from the most talented player Jean has played with, but he still feels breathless watching him; he doesn’t know what to do with that at all.

At the end of practice, Jeremy pushes his sweaty hair out of his face and smiles, bright and true like the sun after a storm; when Jean finds himself smiling back, he suddenly doesn’t feel quite so alone.

Jean is twenty-one when he kisses someone just for the hell of it, half-drunk and foolish at a dorm party, and it doesn’t change his world, but it also doesn’t hurt. It’s just… soft, and sloppy, and maybe somewhat awkward with several of his teammates hollering their rowdy approval in the background. And if he feels nebulously guilty, if his thoughts stray to dark brown hair and warm eyes despite himself, if he doesn’t go further than that one kiss and doesn’t want to, that’s okay. It is enough, for now, simply not to be afraid.

Jean is twenty-one when Alvarez shows up at his dorm with a bag of pretzels and a boxset of some trashy show, and refuses to leave until he is just as hooked as she is. Jean doesn’t know anything about Alvarez apart from her performance stats and the fact that they work well together on the court, and her good-natured ribbing and continued presence on his couch confuse him. He has never been allowed to connect to people outside of Exy, but they don’t really talk about Exy at all; instead, Alvarez leans into his side as she steals his last pretzel and bullies him into starting another episode, and Jean feels something cramped and fearful inside of him finally relax.

Jean is twenty-one the first time he hears someone call his name, flattened and honey-gold in an American mouth, and doesn’t have to fight a flinch. He looks up to see Jeremy, smiling, always smiling, and Jean’s heart flutters traitorously in his chest, but he still doesn’t feel anything other than safe.

Jean is twenty-one when he finds himself lingering on Jeremy time and time again; ever more often, he sees Jeremy looking back. Jeremy insinuates himself into Jean’s life like he was always meant to be there, all honesty and warmth and subtle strength, and Jean can’t help coming back for more. In the back of his mind, the part of him that is true and unafraid, he knows what it means; the rest of him still hesitates.

Jean carries enough of a burden to last him several lifetimes; he has learned the hard way that being close to someone in a position of power over him only leads to ruin and blood. It can’t happen again; he can’t allow himself to get caught in the crosshairs again. Jean tells himself that being brave and naïve and _stupid_ has never led to anything good, and knows it’s true, and carries the scars to back himself up.

His heart still yearns, though. His heart still tells him that this is different, that _Jeremy_ is different, and there is truth there, too. Jeremy is powerful, but his power builds other people up instead of tearing them apart. Jean has seen Jeremy exhausted, has seen him frustrated and on edge, has seen him get fouled or lose a game, yet the truth of his kindness has always shone through, utterly steadfast.

His crush on Renee had been a life raft in a roiling, merciless sea, and Jean had clung to it because the alternative was not to be faced; his feelings for Jeremy are fundamentally, entirely something else. They are real and rich as the sun-dappled, golden brown earth, rooted through with life, solid and true.

Trauma like his leaves ugly scars, but Jean feels better here than he ever did at the Nest; his defiant heart shouts with life, crashes and stumbles and bleeds with it, wild and uncontained. It is terrifying and exhilarating at the same time, and for now, it is all he can do just to sit with it, and quietly understand Renee a little bit more.

Jean is twenty-two the first time Jeremy breaks, and breaks, and _breaks_ , a sun god brought low, and lets Jean put him back together again. Jean holds him through it with trembling hands, heart thundering like a drum inside his too-tight chest, and doesn’t let go even for a moment.

Jean is twenty-two when he makes Court, and for one blinding second he wants to turn them down. He doesn’t, of course – his freedom, his _life_ , is conditional on him maximizing his commercial worth, and he is agonizingly aware of it. He lets himself feel that spark of rebellion nonetheless, feeding quietly into an elemental flame, and accepts the offer in a voice that doesn’t shake.

Jeremy claps him on the shoulder when he hears the news, hesitating on the edge of an embrace, looking soft and proud and so goddamn pretty it _hurts_ , and Jean pulls him close without a second thought, bites down on the unruly words that want to come spilling out. When Kevin calls him later that day, he picks up the phone with hope burgeoning behind his long-healed ribs.

Jean is twenty-two the first time he faces the Ravens on a court without a doubt in his mind that he will win. When they do, he clacks sticks with Alvarez and turns his back on his Raven mark without a word. He looks up to meet Jeremy’s concerned eyes from across the court, gives a slight nod and watches his shoulders slump with relief, and knows what it means, and smiles.

Jean is twenty-two when they unexpectedly crash out of the Championship, losing against an inferior team, and it sucks, and he doesn’t let himself crumble under the weight.

Jean is twenty-two when he kisses Jeremy in his dorm room, both of them smarting with the loss and loopy with exhaustion, and it’s possibly the worst moment to finally act on what’s been building between them since they met, but it’s– it’s Jeremy’s last year at USC, and he should be with the rest of his team, rallying and comforting them like he always has, and instead he’s chosen to be here, bruised and heartsick and beautifully close, and Jean is tired of waiting.

Jeremy kisses him back without hesitation, sighs into it as his hands come up to cradle Jean’s face, warm and generous and trembling with emotion. And Jean knows, he _knows_ it can’t be the truth, but as Jeremy wraps him up and keeps him close, it feels like the first time in his life that something essential happens to him away from the court, and it’s the welcome relief of rain after a draught.

The evening sun bathes them in gentle warmth as Jeremy smiles into the kiss, sweet and utterly sure, and Jean holds him with hopeful hands and doesn’t want to let him go, and it just feels _right_ – Jean is afraid, may always be afraid, may never shed the bitter tendrils of fear hooked into his jagged heart, but his head is blessedly clear and his thoughts are his own, his hands capable of softer things, and that is worth the world.

Jean is twenty-three when he tells Jeremy about the Nest. He knows parts of it already, the sordid details everyone knows about now, and Jean isn’t ready to tell him everything quite yet, not all at once, maybe not ever. Still, it’s more than anyone knows who wasn’t there with him, and that’s terrifying enough.

Jeremy just listens, takes in all the anger and shame and intolerable guilt and starts shouldering part of the weight, no trace of pity or blame on his guileless, beautiful face. When Jean eventually talks himself out, Jeremy holds him close and safe, traces the tattoo on Jean’s face with reverent fingertips, presses salt-tinged kisses to every single one of his scars, and Jean closes his eyes and feels the truth of his kindness down to his weary bones.

Jean is twenty-three when he comes to Jeremy’s first game with the San Diego Warriors, and watches from the stands as Jeremy takes his breath away. His body in motion is a work of art, all grit and agility and supple strength, the rich brown of his skin glowing under the stadium lights. Jean watches him dart around his mark and tear down the court like a blaze, watches him aim and shoot and score in one fluid move, sees his competence and his overarching joy, finally understands what Exy could have meant to him, too.

When Jeremy is subbed off near the end of the game, Alvarez wolf whistles and elbows Jean from her trusted position on his right; Laila leans around her to ruffle his hair, grinning widely as she gives him a thumbs up. “Your boy did great,” she shouts in his ear, the sound of her voice almost drowned out by the dizzying noise, and Jean watches Jeremy raise his racquet and smile to acknowledge the crowd, and he is alive and so proud that he burns with it.

Later, they come back to Jeremy’s apartment in La Jolla, and Jeremy fits into the space like it was made just for him; it’s airy and bright, with lots of windows to welcome the briny air rolling in from the ocean nearby, a colourful abundance of flowering plants climbing the white plaster outside. Jeremy closes the door and turns to him, smiling and relaxed in sweats and an oversized shirt, marked out in the light that loves him so much; he reaches out, and Jean folds into his embrace like a sigh of relief, quiet and true.

Jean is twenty-three when he plays his last game against the full force of the Josten-Minyard-Day triangle in a blizzard of Palmetto orange and unrelenting noise. Before the start of the game, he spots Renee and Allison in the stands, Allison somehow glamorous even in head-to-toe orange, Renee looking serene and steady with a Trojan bandana tied around her orange-tipped hair. Next to them, Laila and Alvarez whoop and holler at him so loudly he can hear them from the court, impossibly familiar in their old team jerseys, their arms tightly wrapped around each other’s waists.

His eyes land on Jeremy last, during line-up, a safe haven when he needs it most. Jean is nervous, his heart in his throat and tension trickling icy fingers down his spine; but when Jeremy smiles, it feels like coming home.

The buzzer goes, and the stadium goes wild. Jean is set to guard Kevin, and it’s truly incredible how well he plays when he isn’t nursing injuries or being overworked; on the other side of the court, Vasquez is trying to keep up with Josten and perpetually lagging behind. During the game, Jean notices Minyard’s quiet watchfulness and his prodigious, underutilized skill, the way Josten bares his teeth and grins behind the grate of his helmet, his scars on proud display; Kevin, fierce and unafraid, playing like there’s nothing he can’t do. They move as one amid a sea of dizzying noise, always determinedly connected somehow, and Jean wonders what it means, and doesn’t ask.

Jean plays like he’s on fire, like the air is sweeping him along; it still isn’t enough. Vazquez is okay, if a little sloppy on his footwork, but Jean misses Alvarez shoring up his right, and the gaps in their defense are showing more and more the longer the game goes on. Jean fights to prevent every Palmetto point, shoulder checks Kevin hard enough to earn a yellow card and an angry tirade from the ref, tries to make up for Vazquez’s inaccurate passing by being everywhere at once, but he can’t hold back both Kevin and Josten forever, and across the court, Minyard is apparently paying attention and coolly refusing to let anyone score.

In the end, they lose the game. When the buzzer announces a 5-0 score, Jean drops his racquet and slowly exhales; around him, the stadium explodes into a riot of sound, shakes with the thudding of thousands of feet. Losing stings like it always has and always will, but it doesn’t have the power to wreck him anymore; that alone is a victory worth living for. Jean wordlessly clasps Kevin’s shoulder and nods acknowledgment at Josten, who nods back; he doesn’t look up at the stands as he turns and walks off the court.

Jeremy is waiting for him in the catacombs, smiling and warmly familiar; Jean walks into his waiting arms and buries his face in the side of his neck, and loves him, loves him, loves him, untamed and unafraid.

Jean is twenty-three when he signs with the Los Angeles Rams; it’s his first pro team, his first time voluntarily striking out on his own, and it’s not the team Kevin recommended, and he’s _terrified_. The Rams are middle of the league, nowhere near championship material, with no other players marked for Court; but their coach wasn’t trained by the Ravens and doesn’t ask about his time with them, and there’s mandatory therapy sessions for every player on the team, and that would have meant an automatic no even a year ago, but now it just feels _right_.

Jeremy calls him right after he signs the contract, and his voice is warm honey tinged with gold, glowing with pride and irrefutable trust. Jean misses him like he used to miss the sea, the sheer absence of him seemingly infinite sometimes, but he feels sure about his choice, and he feels sure about Jeremy, and so hearing his voice only serves to calm the wild, irrepressible gallop of his hopeful heart.

Jean is twenty-three when his team faces Jeremy’s on a San Diego court, and Jeremy grins at him from behind the grate of his Warriors helmet, bright and excited and devastatingly beautiful, and Jean feels himself smiling back. When the buzzer goes, he allows himself to fall easily into the rhythm of the chase, carried forward by the quiet light in Jeremy’s eyes.

Years later, Jean will not remember the final score of the game, details lost to the blur of his decade-long career. What he does remember is this: after the game, they kiss in full view of the cameras, thundering hearts drowned out by the incoherent screaming of the crowd. When they break apart, Jeremy smiles his true smile, sunny and sweet, and Jean loves him so much it _hurts_ , sometimes.

He reaches out just to kiss him again, certain like a promise kept, and Jeremy laughs into his mouth as he readily kisses him back, and Jean wraps himself in the sound of his laughter, imagines the future bright and free and unashamed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, I really hope you enjoyed! Kudos and comments are always appreciated! You can also find me on [tumblr](http://www.dustbottle.tumblr.com), come and say hi!


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